Critics agree that much of Southeast Asia desperately needs judicial reform and rule of law. Yet, there is remarkably little comparative scholarship on law and legal institutions in the region. In this blog, I'll follow constitutional developments in Brunei, Burma (Myanmar), Cambodia, East Timor, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam, as well as the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

Wednesday, December 29, 2010

Book Review: Political Insurance, redux

Jodi Finkel's Judicial Reform as Political Insurance: Argentina, Peru, and Mexico in the 1990s (ND Kellogg Inst Int'l Studies) essentially expands upon the rational-strategic argument of judicial empowerment presented by Ran Hirscl and Tom Ginsburg, with Latin American case studies. Finkel's study takes the argument one step further by differentiating between initiation and implementation of judicial reforms. The former costs political leaders little, while the latter could end up empowering courts to rule against the regime. It is only when the political elite fears losing power that they actually implement judicial reforms.Finkel's case studies demonstrate her thesis very well. However, in some aspects the book just wasn't thorough enough. For example, she did not discuss standing or access to the courts as a variable. Also, I wasn't fully convinced by her rejection of economic factors. I would like to have seen discussion of how dependent each country was on FDI, for example. Finally, even though the book was published in 2008, she seems to ignore much of the literature on this subject between 2001-2008, including Ginsburg'sJudicial Review in New Democracies: Constitutional Courts in Asian Cases.Nonetheless, Finkel makes an important distinction in separating proposals for legal reforms and actual substantive implementation. It's a distinction I'd love to see tested somewhere.

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About Dom

Dominic Nardi is a third year Ph.D. student at the University of Michigan in the Political Science Department. He is interested in judicial politics in developing countries, particularly Myanmar, the Philippines, and Indonesia. His dissertation research focuses on how non-state actors influence judicial behavior. In addition to his research at the U of M, he has also worked for legal organizations in Indonesia and the Philippines and has published articles about judicial politics in Southeast Asia both in law reviews and in popular media.